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And Tellez makes three: Chaney tosses Dole verdict

By Richard Binder

Judge Victoria Chaney, acting as a Los Angeles County, Calif., Superior Court judge, threw out a $2.3 million verdict against Dole Food Co., ruling that widespread fraud orchestrated by the plaintiffs' attorneys prevented the food company from deposing witnesses.

She concluded that plaintiffs' lawyers in Tellez v. Dole, Juan J. Dominguez of Los Angeles and Nicaraguan attorney Antonio Hernandez Ordeñana, had coached the plaintiffs, falsified medical records and intimidated Dole's investigators in Nicaragua. 

Chaney also exonerated two Texas attorneys, Mark Sparks of Beaumont's Provost Umphrey and Benton Musslewhite, a Houston solo practitioner, in the fraud. Both had been implicated last year in a related case against Dole called Mejia v. Dole, which she also threw out along with another case against the food company.

Tellez was brought by Nicaraguans who claim they were rendered sterile after being exposed to the pesticide dibromochloropropane, or DBCP, while working on Dole's banana plantations during the 1970s.

Full story at NLJ.com.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on July 16, 2010 (boomark / email).